'Cannibal Cop' Defends Fetish: 'People Don’t Choose The Things They're Aroused By'

Former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle III, known by his tabloid moniker “cannibal cop,” sat for a forthcoming interview with syndicated television show “Crime Watch Daily.” Valle was convicted of conspiracy to kidnap in 2013 — a conviction that was later overturned — after his wife discovered chat room conversations in which Valle discussed plots to kidnap, rape, torture and cannibalize women.

In his latest interview, 33-year-old Valle defends his sexual fetishes to harm women, saying, “People don’t choose the things they’re aroused by.”

Valle maintains his innocence and even considers himself a victim. He made his case in a “Crime Watch Daily” segment obtained by the New York Post ahead of its Tuesday premiere.

In the clip, “Crime Watch Daily” host Chris Hansen questions the graphic nature of what Valle has maintained are merely sexual fetishes. “You talk about kidnapping women, putting them in a suitcase, delivering them for a gang rape, and then killing them,” Hansen says, referring to Valle’s chat messages about his ex-wife Kathleen Mangan-Valle and her friends.

Read: Gilberto Valle, NYPD 'Cannibal' Cop, Plotted To Kidnap, Cook, Eat Women

“Again, it’s very graphic, brutal stuff. It was never anything real; it was all fictional,” Valle says, adding that “everyone has their own things.”

He continues, “I have no problem saying my thoughts are deviant, they’re unusual, they’re abnormal, but they don’t affect who I am in real life. This was something I never planned on telling anyone.”

When challenged by Hansen that “these are your words,” Valle retorts, “It’s one thing when I’m an anonymous screen name. It’s another thing when I’m sitting here looking at you, and I’m Gil and I’m a person now. I speak about — in these chats — a human-sized oven, a house in the middle of nowhere, a white van. None of this stuff exists. It’s all clearly fictional.”

Valle revealed in the two-minute clip that he hasn’t spoken to his wife since his arrest. “I wish we had our old life back,” he says. As of last year, Valle reportedly hadn’t seen his daughter, then 4 years old, either.

Valle was found guilty by a Manhattan jury in 2013 and faced a life sentence after his wife discovered detained explicit plans to abduct and murder women in chat rooms under the "Girlmeat Hunter." The prosecution provided evidence of Google searches that included "human meat recipes," "electric cattle prod shock" and "how to chloroform a girl."

His conviction of conspiracy to kidnap and cannibalize was overturned in 2014 by Judge Paul G. Gardephe, who lessened Valle’s charge to a one-year sentence for using an official police database to find information about women. CBS reported in 2016 that Valle took the LSAT and was pursuing a law career.

Valle’s “Crime Watch Daily” segment airs Tuesday, May 2 at 1 p.m. EDT on WPIX-TV.